for all members of his body, which is all mankind, as we have seen. That gospel calls upon sinners to believe that they are saved, not to believe they will be saved, because they believe. This gospel was never preached till Christ came, and then only to the Jews, as the gospel of the kingdom, which kingdom had not come, and for the reason it was not true until the death of Christ, which death was the sole cause of which that kingdom is the effect, as we have before shown, viz., that God suffered all nations until Christ came, to walk in their own ways, but then commanded them to repent. The inference is plain, as we conceive, that Paul preached to the Athenians the gospel of their salvation in Christ, and for that cause they were to repent, not to make that gospel true, but because it was true, and if they believed it true, it was good cause for their turning from both their sins and their idolatries, and that they might enjoy the blessedness of a gospel faith and a holy life. True and genuine repentance is always the fruit of gospel faith, but never the cause of it. True gospel ministers, the ambassadors of Christ, never threaten, but beseech sinners to be reconciled to God and to love God, because he sent his Son to save them by taking away the sins of the world, and if sinners believe the message, they necessarily, naturally and certainly respond to that love, and thus loving God, they love righteousness and hate sin, and desire to turn from it, which is "repentance unto life." We have thus shown scripturally and clearly, as we hope, that the glorious gospel of the blessed God declared and proclaimed

that the whole and entire humanity was saved in and through the life and death of Christ, from all condemnation, and freely and perfectly justified and "made accepted in him," Christ.

CHAPTER VIII.

We are now prepared, as we trust, to show the difference in purpose and design of the divine economy, in dispensing the law and its ordinances to the Jews (and to them only), and in dispensing the gospel to all mankind. Thus the law came to the Jews from God by Moses, which law found them in the indulgence of fleshly lusts, for which that law condemned them, showing that for the destruction of those lusts their fleshly bodies must also be destroyed, and that law immediately instituted sacrificial offerings, typifying and symbolizing the sacrifice of a promised Messiah, and the very first requirement of that law was the offering the blood of the sacrificial lamb, sprinkled upon the doorposts of their dwellings, which blood was accepted of God, as the evidence of the figurative death of the people, in that of the paschal lamb; and again after the people had journeyed from Egypt to Mount Sinai, Moses sprinkled all the people with sacrificial blood, in which God accepted them also, as having died in the animal slain, and also as his covenant people. It is thus clearly inferable from the record that that law was itself the condemnation of that

people, nay, it was their curse (cursing every one, every Jew), that continued not in all things written in the book of the law to do them. Well and truly, therefore, did Paul call that law a "ministration of condemnation." For what purpose then, is the natural inquiry, was the law given? Answer. "It was added because of transgression, till the seed ' of the Messiah, Christ,' should come," evidently meaning, as we conceive, that the sacrifices under the law were instituted to show that death was necessary to destroy the fleshly lusts, and thereby purge away their sinfulness before they could have access to and acceptance with God, as we have before shown, and these sacrifices symbolized that death and that access to and acceptance with God, until the seed-Christ-should come, for we have shown that the death of the animal slain was figuratively their death, so the death of Christ, the head, should be that also of all the members of his body. And, moreover, the law entered that the offence might abound; that is, might be known; as by the law, saith Paul, is the knowledge of sin. It is thus seen that the law given to the Israelites placed them under condemnation and also under a curse, and they remained in that state until Christ came and took both the condemnation and the curse, by his death, as the head of all mankind. Hence it is that Gentiles were also all under sin and in the same moral condition, and from the same cause, viz., the fleshly lusts, but they had never been so declared nor so cursed by a written law, as it is written, “sin is not imputed when there is no

law,” and that is the only difference in the two

cases.

The Israelites had, by virtue of that law, been under that condemnation and that curse fifteen hundred years, but the Gentiles never. Therefore when Christ, the head of every man, took away the sins both of the Jews and the Gentiles by his death, and reconciled both unto God, there was no more condemnation or curse in either case, and that everlasting gospel proclaimed that all the lost sheep of the Gentiles and of the house of Israel as well, constituted one fold, and were saved from their sins, and that the righteousness of Christ came upon them alike unto justification of life; all which transpired in the year of Christ thirty-three, and on that day, and at the instant he proclaimed upon the cross, with a loud voice, "It is finished." Such is the only salvation, and the only gospel in support and in proof of which the Scriptures agree with themselves, and at the same time with the attributes ascribed to God by the whole Christian world. And it is moreover the only salvation and gospel that were needed either by the whole or any portion of mankind. Tell us now thou doubting, fearing Christendom, are not all these sheep safe in the fold, Christ? Can the devil or any other adversary lay anything to their charge? It is God that justifieth them through Christ, that died for them. It having been scriptu rally and therefore triumphantly shown that the world is saved in and through Christ, it is in order to show the effects of that salvation upon those who have come to the knowledge of it, through the gos